when it rains, it pours.

I left the office today feeling relieved, it was the end of a Thursday, which means almost Friday, which means it's almost the weekend. Happiness. Not even the weather could ruin my weekend anticipation. So I thought. In fact the weather had a direct significance on my succumbed mood alteration, mere minutes from leaving the office. The subtle and subconscious observations of pedestrians, on their walk to their very own "almost Friday happiness" seemed to literally rain on my parade within the comfort of my dry car. Just as the rain started to get harder, my mood got heavier. Just as the last sun rays were demolished so were my happy thoughts getting darker to the point of being tarnished. The gentleman dressed in the colours of brightness was quickly becoming paler and duller by the wetness. His fast-paced walking couldn't keep up with my dry and arrogant car. The urge to stop and lend a helping hand of comfort was shunned by the cars behind me failing to feel the urge to do the same. Even if the drivers behind me thought to do so, they too were shunned by the driver behind them. All of us driving in this convoy of ignorance and selfishness. It was the next gentleman that brought the rain in my car - in the form of liquid salty streams down my cheeks. He peddled to his "almost Friday". He had the calves of hard-work, determination and consistency. Yet he was unable to keep up with my car. I passed him, wishing I had a bicycle shrinker and hot coffee to offer while he could sit in my unused passenger seat. It was not until I was brought to a stop with the other drivers, a stop in our single-minded, blinker-eyed lives, that he cycled in-between us with ease and skills of a New York mail delivery man, yet this wasn't a first world. No, it's third world Africa. By the time he swiftly cycled through our cumbersome money eating, environment destroyers, he was drenched apart from the black bin bag, he'd cut holes into for his nimble limbs and focused face. The bag wasn't there for his body. It was there to protect his meagre backpack. I cried harder. My mind wondered as to what could possibly be in this souls' backpack. What possessions was he so protective over and what possessed me to ever open my eyes to beyond my windscreen wipers.

The thing that possessed me is not necessarily a once off spirit of sorts. It lies dormant in all of us. It's the unseen connectivity between eye-mind-heart-soul that creates compassion, humility and subjection to reevaluate the bigger picture that is this world and its many lives. Count your blessings but don't forget to make others count too.

It's the drive home from work that reignites the connection, it's the humble face of the smiling petrol attendee, the person waiting at the taxi rank at 9pm hoping they haven't missed their last chance to get to their home after their long day, it's the working force of our country. It's the recognition of the low income low outcome people of any country that sparks the higher income higher outcome minority to delve out of their happiness to glimpse the other way of life, even if for a brief 20minute drive.

But is acknowledgment of awareness enough? It doesn't morph itself into an umbrella to shelter the cyclist on his journey home, however far or long it may be. It doesn't pay for the unseen cavity causing that smiling attendee pain and it doesn't ensure the taxi arrives safely at its destination.

So how does a mere 25 year old female solve the worlds issues without using up all the tissues in a self implosive manner? I had to snap out of my downward cry fest on the way home as it does no one any good anywhere. This I know. What I don't know is how to make it count.

Counting and then comparing one's' blessings to another is neither constructive or conducive to make any kind of change. On the contrary, it's constrictive - in terms of developing a surreal goal, based on developing a quick-fix, single solution and utopian thought of low effort high effectiveness. Sheltered yet educated, I sit here wanting the hunger problems fixed in Ethiopia, I want the refugees of the Democratic Republic of Congo to be able to go back to their homeland to live happily ever after. It's just not going to happen, not instantly at least.

Pale steam ahead

You can't help who you're falling for

When you just fall

The white cliffs of Cortez

Never seemed that tall

I think I need it all

So find something, fill the time

And I'll know you'll do the same when we climb

Someone's gotta give

Under the thundering night

Someone's gotta live

Like they're livng their whole life

Acknowledge what you have in your hands

Out in the rain

It's alright to walk back

Just not the same as you left

So as far as we go

I follow myself

Paint my face red

My face says "help"

Believing in me

Reason I'm around

What you have in your hands

It's been two hundred and fourteen days since my frontal lobe "fused" and I became responsible and grown-up. One would think that I'd have got used to it by now, it takes the average person 66days to form a habit or routine and I've had 214. I guess I'm not the "average". Whatever the case, that clarion travel bug is starting to re-appear and my brain is bouncing ideas back and forth like a bug trying to escape the sheet netting on a house burning to the ground. Intoxicated with the fumes, the bug is becoming exhausted. This fire is illusive yet fiery in nature. At the core it is blue in color, becoming red hot and lashing out at the colors of my soul. The crackling sounds of my house caving are becoming hard to ignore. It's not derived from unhappiness or mundanity, constant friction of fighting against everyday life. No. It's the fire that's created from embers that are constantly glowing, growing and engrossing all that is life. Wanting to explore. Wanting to learn. Wanting to be wild. 

Wildfire. 

Possibly unstoppable from the get-go, 

When life can't get drier

It's the search flow

To the vast hills

The highest 

To the ample frills

The farthest

To the sunshine shadows

The Regardless.

instantaneously knowing

Infants who were exposed to alcohol, cigarette smoke or garlic in the womb show a preference for the smells. To them, the smells that might upset other babies seem normal or even comforting.

While I was exposed (as much as one can be in a womb) to alcohol, cigarette smoke and presumably garlic... and have grown up to be a garlic eating, alcohol drinking smoker... there are other more pungent smells that trigger all my senses down to my olfactory bulb and my limbic system close by. The smell of musty wet rubber, neoprene and petrol. One whiff of the stuff and I'm power launched into a benzene induced state of euphoria.

smell can call up memories and powerful responses almost instantaneously.

The olfactory bulb has intimate access to the amygdala, which processes emotion, and the hippocampus, which is responsible for associative learning. Despite the tight wiring, however, smells would not trigger memories if it weren't for conditioned responses. When you first smell a new scent, you link it to an event, a person, a thing or even a moment. Your brain forges a link between the smell and a memory. When you encounter the smell again, the link is already there, ready to elicit a memory or a mood. This is part of the reason why not everyone likes the same smells.

Given that certain smells learned and loved or hated are imprinted in humans from before birth to every new event in their lifetime... there must a connection between the emotional association of smell to the science of pheromones and MHC (major histcompatability complex) - the very primitive act of smelling out your best suited partner. Surely it can't be based purely on coincidence if you both like the same smells due to your initial connection with them. While MHC focuses on pheromones and the literal ability to smell dissimilar genes to create stronger smaller creatures, based on a primal instinct - The limbic system is highly interconnected with the nucleus accumbens, the brain's pleasure center, which plays a role in sexual arousal and the "high" derived from drugs. Either way, you're physically, mentally and emotionally evoked by the 10,000 smells that each human can identify. 


My point being that if your "best suited" partner likes the smell of petrol as much as you do... then you're on par and destined to a life of lakeside summers and happily ever after. Perhaps this is a whimsical approach and it's not the smell of petrol that connects you but the appreciation of who, how and what your were brought up to love.  
So dip me a man in petrol and set the pheromones afire.

i think it's gonna rain, but i could be wrong

When I was surrounded by the world

You were the only one who came

And you were the only one astounded

Which kept me grounded

As the other girls trashed my very name

 

Then I looked over

Just in time to see you smiling back at me

And saying everything's OK

As long as you're inside my blue veins

Your blue veins

 

Yeah and the feeling that you gave me

No matter what I do or where I go

It always will remain

And those who would enslave me to get to me must get past you and will have no luck

Cause you'll protect me from all pain

 

The most beautiful, yeah the most beautiful thing cause anything else can't compare

Must be the blood that's running through your blue veins

Your blue veins

Your blue veins 

And I know you won't deceive me

Like the rest and there's nothing you need to explain

You always were the first one to believe me

When I said to you girl

I think it's gonna rain

But I could be wrong

 

Yeah but all of these things

All these things

They're all truly nice but ain't nothing

Ain't nothing compared to the love that's running through your little blue veins

 

Your blue veins - The Raconteurs

frozen waves

I dive into frozen waves where the past comes back to life

Fight fear for the selfish pain, it was worth it every time
Hold still right before we crash 'cause we both know how this ends.
A clock ticks 'til it breaks your glass and I drown in you again

'Cause you are the piece of me I wish I didn't need

Chasing relentlessly, still fight and I don't know why

If our love is tragedy, why are you my remedy?

If our love's insanity, why are you my clarity?

Walk on through a red parade and refuse to make amends

It cuts deep through our ground and makes us forget all common sense

Don't speak as I try to leave 'cause we both know what we'll choose

If you pull then I'll push too deep and I'll fall right back to you

watch the video:

All great changes are preceded by chaos

Not really sure how to feel about it.
Around and around and around we go.
Significantly, you're the broken one. But I need saving.
Up till now, I thought I had avoided, ignored and discarded the idea of a quarter-life crisis. But here I am back in my hometown, back in my room that has seen nights of the light left on, cupboards that were emptied during temper tantrums, mirrors that have cringed from teenage outfit choices, doors that I've snuck out of and recklessly back in through. I'm not going to lie, it's a defeat.
It's not the worst kind though.  I could be a lot worse off in many ways. This is a constant thing I have to remind my family. The reply to "Roxanne, who were you talking to?" is not "My crack cocaine supplier, mom".

These are my options; a one way ticket to the coast of Mexico, opening a salad bar and drinking tequila. OR getting through this day to day, ending the days with tequila. OR changing the focus up a bit, with or without tequila. Distraction is a famed path of resistance to negativity. The distractions don't necessarily have to be thought of as the easy way out. I hardly think waking up before sunrise to sit on a stationary bicycle is desirably easy nor is making sense of the piece of paper I've been chasing for years intriguingly easy.
Distractions now, clarity in time.

All great changes are preceded by chaos.

pennies and dimes

i never seem to learn
that high makes things harder
that high i get from you

i think it's time to run
i'm seeing stars
watch me fall apart


unlike alt j, triangles are not my favorite shape.

how does one immerse oneself so deep in uncontrol? How does one never make the same mistake twice but rather several times? Is it rooted in a masochistic, emotionally damaged and feverish temperament?
Those bullets I was facing, failingly dodging and getting hit by have now wounded me.
I sink in my own life as it pours out around me into every selfish crevasse and as it dries I die. The unfathomable, even to my own brain, is that it was myself holding that gun. A sacrifice, a secret and now a suicide.
Metaphorically speaking of course.
This depth I'm edging upon is not foreboding, it's not unexpected, it's comforting. I've fallen from grace. Taken a blow to my face. I have loved and I've lost.
These are my darkest emotions, the one's that stem from secrecy and diminish serenity. Now everything I know is falling from the sky in pieces, to watch them fall with you in slow motion. I pray that I'll find peace of mind. I'll find it another time. I will love you another time.

But this is a fleeting mind set. Who judges these things?
When you're at the point of making a right from wrong decision and your head and heart are coming apart at the seams and losing touch with each other, and the road of  clarity becomes blurred and hazes over encompassing your stability and makes you fall.
Fall off the borderline.
Fall.
Anything could happen.
There was a bond.
There was a friendship and an affection.
An alliance and an affinity.
Yet now there is animosity and an unacquainted endearment of reticence and passion.
It was slow on the start, disinclined to be nothing and never.
Perhaps it was that which makes its reserve and innoxiousness that much more than nothing.
I won't chase this as I usually do, not because I don't want to, but because much like a rainbow the storm must pass, the molecules in the sky should be captured by the light source and this is nature. And what becomes of this, the end, at the end of the rainbow...
either disappointment or gold.

something's fused

It has come to my attention that the concept of the reacher/settler is quite pivotal to my life. There is always a reacher or settler in what they call a relationship, or namely an acquaintance. 

One person is far “superior” than the other. Superior in looks or personality, mostly looks though. Perhaps, if you scored people out of 10 (if is good) a person pushing a standard 6 who was interested in an above average 8 - they would be reaching.

Basically reaching beyond their depth or rank. You may score substantially higher in personality than looks, but one way or another you will be inferior. If an inferior miraculously happens to grab the attention of a superior, said superior is settling.  In the sense of nouns, this is what the definition comes to mean. It may seem shallow or meaningless but you cannot deny that it happens with most to many people. The few that get it right, the right balance of aesthetics and human interest, well they might be married or dead from over-awesomeness. 

Not only is this concept as deep as a puddle, it’s also explained in verb form. At a slightly deeper level. If you were to thesaurus this concept (not really though) it would reply with the word “effort”. Now I’m not one to define efforts; it is complex to compare, acknowledge or rectify. But I am human, in the female version, so I do subconsciously keep tabs. 

Realizing I am a reacher in the verb sense has been a painful pill to swallow. I reach. Just re-reading that last sentence makes me wretch. If it’s not hard, if it’s not an inconvenience, if it’s not worth second guessing I will make the effort. It could come down to values and how much you value the other person, even if they may meet the standards of a reacher in noun form. It may stem from the fact that I’m competitive in a loving manner. Having said that, it is undoubtedly not fun to “compete” alone. The settler can also be termed as the taker. To settle with the idea that all my efforts will continuously be taken for grated is a short-sighted, selfish and naive notion. I learn from my mistakes. If you happen to be a mistake, I won’t make it twice. I am not settling to always be the reacher. Some kind of reciprocation would be appreciated. I get that everyone has their own way to portray that they are making an “effort” but please be aware that this portrayal has to be obvious to the receiver otherwise it is null and void. You may just be dime a dozen. You may just not be that into me. You may just be a personality encased in a computer. 

It was a summer night, the stars were all aligned, you showed up and blew my mind. we didn’t sleep at all, played records all night long. that night I kind of fell in love. something in your kiss made my body electric, you set me free. that night brought to life all the magic that’s inside of you and me. When you grow a pair you can call me back, and no I don’t want to see your mangina.